Mastering Music Tech with Masterchannel

Jakob Wredstrøm

At this episode of Sound Connection, we're going to speak with Christian Schultz. He is the co-founder and CEO of MasterChannel.ai, which is a really interesting mastering service. It's going to be a part of a founder series where we talk with founders and the journeys they're currently on, and hopefully it will inspire you. Today's gonna be an episode with Christian Struetz. He is the CEO of mastertannel.ai. I'm starting a new part of this podcast called the Founders Series, where I'm gonna interview founders that are in the middle of the journey. Christian, I met you last year at Creative Tech something in Oslo, where you guys did a really good job and won the Norwegian Let's call it a competition, creative tech competition. I was really intrigued about what you do. And what's really interesting is since we met last year, a lot of things that happened with you guys. So I thought it really interesting to talk with you and ask about your journey, ask about who you are. So people here in the podcast can be a bit inspired. But question, who are you? Could you just briefly introduce yourself? Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me on. So my name is Christian. 29 year old from Oslo, Norway turning 30 in a couple of days actually. But yeah, I'm a musician by heart. Started playing piano when I was six, started producing music when I was 13. But then I eventually also went into starting companies. And with Master Channel, these have been like my two worlds have collided. And also with my business background. But yeah, I'm a creative guy and love to create stuff. And I'm lucky to be able to do it from day to day now. So you say you started with music. Has business and starting companies been a parallel thing the whole time? Or what's your relationship with that? Yeah, so I started out with selling chocolate to my solo last mates back when I was like 80 years old.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And then I started my first record company when I was 15. Um, didn't know what, uh, what a record label was at that point, but, uh, we managed to sell from CEDIS and stuff like that. Uh, so yeah, it has been going hand in hand, but, uh, as people probably know, like now it's been more professionalized than ever with employees and raising money and selling to most of the most parts of the world. So, yeah. So what was your dream to be a musician? Or like, was it because for me personally, like it's been sort of unconscious choice because I was focused on music. And then the same story as you, I apparently I did business. And then at one point I realized this business thing is probably gonna be more fun and more me. Is that the same experience you have with it? Yeah, so for me, I didn't want it to become a musician, but from back home, like my parents were really about, okay, you need to take some education. So then I started taking a business administration bachelor. And then it slowly like drifted into me seeing, okay, maybe I don't want to become a full-time musician. I rather want to work in an intersection and not necessarily with music only, but creative arts where you have this kind of like something or subjectiveness of it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

they like. That's really interesting. A bit later in the podcast, we'll dive a bit more into you and your founders and your thoughts behind it. So we'll venture back to that. But the reason why you're here is because of Master Channel. Master Channel is a really interesting product and I've tried it out. I've also known of this area within the music industry for some time, but it seems like you guys are doing a bit differently. Could you, you've probably done plenty of pitches, but could you pitch to me what is Master Channel.ai? Yeah, so Massachannel.ai is a automated mastering service that automatically professionalizes your song with one click of a button. You can look at it similar to how photos are being enhanced on your phone. This is what we're doing for music. And right now, we are also, with our technology, opening up so any platform can have AI mastering service through white labeling, which means that we can branch out and also that they can generate more money and get more happy customers. Yeah, I read that. I think you posted about this two weeks ago, something like that. I was really excited because one of the things that I've been following with MasterChannel is like, okay, there's some giants, you know, Lander and stuff like that, that has already huge market cap. Even though you might deliver a better product, a better service, that's a pretty big fight to have. But having this approach with white label is really interesting. For the users, the listeners who don't have product background, could you explain what a white label is? Yeah, so a white label is essentially, we take our product and put another company's brand on it. So it seems like they are the one that has developed it. But under the hood, it's our technology and us that are powering it. Because it's been quite a long time. short journey for you guys. You know, I was reading and about, you know, the initiation of the company and it looks like, you know, 2020 was where like the first like beta version was launched or alpha, whatever you call it. And then you joined right after. But could you talk a bit about the inception of Master Channel? Like how did that happen? Yeah, so Master Channel got started when my co-founder Simon Estenbaum, which is a both a former mastering engineer and also audio

Jakob Wredstrøm

it got a lot of increase from potential clients that wanted him to master their songs for 10 or $20 per song, which he obviously couldn't have or didn't have capacity for. So then he created the prototype, which eventually became off the channel, where he mimicked how he is doing it, fully automatic using AI. And this was back in early 2020. At that time, I... got in touch with him because I was in need of a Mastering Engineer and I was one of those people who asked if he could do it for $20. And then I tested it out. And I was so surprised then about the result and the user friendliness because I tested out services like Lander, eMaster and all the other services out there. And due to my business background, I saw that, okay, this could be something more. So then we started working together fully digitally. We hadn't met each other. We didn't know each other from previous experiences. And this went on for one and a half year until Simon actually moved to Norway. And yeah, we onboarded a 12 miles of third co-founder because we knew we needed someone from the industry who could really help us push boundaries and open doors. So yeah, that's how the whole thing started out in the beginning. That's interesting because you know, most stories when you start companies, you know, you may be a group of people and say we want to create this product. But in this case, it was sort of like it just happened organically through his work. And, you know, when you when you say it, it seems really easy. But obviously, it's not like, do you have any understanding of how difficult it was for him to create that initial product? It was kind of hard. So some of the challenges, because he had He had the demand side, he had artists that wanted it. And the challenge was to actually understand how to create it in a scalable way. And this is also something that differentiates us from our competitors, the way that we build up our technology, that it's much more scalable and easier to actually use for a developer to continue to improve. But some of the more...

Jakob Wredstrøm

harder things was how to actually commercialize this in a fully fledged way because there were a lot of licenses that were needed. How do you get money to pay for those licenses? How do you actually turn this into a proper business? And that has been a great learning experience for both of us. Yeah. So when you say you need a lot of licenses, is it because of the learning was happening on different licenses or like what do you mean by that? Yeah. In the beginning, we used... a lot of licenses to eventually learn and also process because a lot of what we're doing is being done in the same way as a mastering engineer does it. So you need plugins, you need the tools and do the processing. But over time, we have actually switched out a lot of these to proprietary technology to make it even better for our users and our use case. That's really interesting. And I guess it's really good to have a CTO on your team that's that clever. But obviously, you know, that's one step with a journey and you come in as CEO. So, so were you comfortable in, you know, jumping into that role? Yeah. So for context, like I've been the CEO of a pretty startup that eventually failed and crashed, so I knew a lot of, or some about it. And I also been a perfection that. takes charge when there is a need for it. But of course there have been a lot of moments where you are kind of like afraid or you don't really know what you're doing. But then you just need to think about like, okay, who can be a good person to talk to? How can you solve this problem? And be upfront with you not knowing all things even though you have COA in the title. Because... In a business perspective, CEO is the easiest title to get. It's just to create a company. Yeah. No, that makes sense. And I guess because the company that fails, that tilt something. Tilt spot. Yeah, tilt spot. Because I think that's really interesting because that gives you, let's say, the confidence or at least the possibility of venturing into something like that. Can you?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Brief detail what that was and also the part about the failure and what you learned from that? Yeah, so TealSpot was a gaming platform that allowed people to use their smartphone as a hand controller connected to a computer. So you to play online games or social games together, which means that you didn't need to buy a Nintendo or PlayStation in order to play co-op games. Sure. And we launched it and we got some game development studios to create games for it and all of that. But what eventually killed the whole thing was a lack of, I would say, talk between us founders that we had different motivations. And especially when you started this, we started during university. Yeah. And when you are about to leave university, people start to think, okay, do we have money to actually fund this going forward? And then people went on to get jobs and then it died out, even though we had to raise some money, but yeah. And I think a lot of it comes down to we weren't commercializing it enough. We were too tech focused and why don't you just create something cool for ourselves? It opens up for interesting discussion about second time founders and whether or not maybe that's the only way to create something successful. There's probably exceptions like me, myself, you know, before I started Capella, I've been a founder of two other companies unlike real companies and I've done, of course, multiple small ones. But sort of the failure from one of those companies, it's called Tamber, that there will also be an episode about, was really a story about trying to make something and maybe not understanding yourself fully and what you're capable of, and then being on that journey. And the only way that I'm able to have somewhat of an ability to start a company now and run it is by failing before. Is that the same experience you have? Yeah, so I think a lot of. So when starting MasterChang, what I was really conscious about was talking to Simon and Tom about, okay,

Jakob Wredstrøm

What are your goals? What do you want to get out of it? Because if they or one of them wanted it to be a hobby project or something else, then it's no point of actually pursuing this as a full adventure. You need to be aligned in terms of what you actually want to achieve here. And that is also important to do overall. And that is something I really learned from the first venture. Yeah. Did you have any, let's say, personal experiences with yourself that you needed to improve or expose any weaknesses that you've sort of carried out in your experience with MasterChannel? Yeah, from the previous startup? Yeah. Yeah, so I think being honest with others and also being honest with myself about like, how do you actually have it day to day? Talk about those things and not only coming to work and try to push out as much as possible when it comes to like the technical things. Yeah. I think that's been one of the key reasons. And yeah, and during that time with my previous company, it was a rough time, but managed to get through and that has also learned like, okay, if you just have focus on what you're going to do next, then most likely it will work out. Yeah. What's your opinion about the second time founder thing, do you think it's something that most people need to go through in order to have clarity the same way that you gain clarity than I get clarity? It's not a leading question. I'm just reading. Not necessarily. Because I wouldn't like state myself as a fully fledged second time founder, even though I started a company prior, because we never took the step of actually working full time in that company. But I think you can do really well as a first time founder and you have multiple examples of it. But I think one of the important things if you are a first time founder, it's about listening to other people that have done it prior, learning from them.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Be bold enough to go your own ways. Because if you're also only listening to other people, then the likelihood of you actually owning your problem and finding a good solution that you can really own is likely to be close to zero. Yep. You guys are based in Norway. And I guess there must be a strategic reason for you not going to Germany and Simon coming here. But what's your experience with running such a business in Nordics. Do you sense any positives or negatives that are glaring? Yeah. So starting a company in Norway is, and that's one of the reasons why we started here. We have some really good self-funding opportunities. It's easy to get started, less bureaucracy compared to, for example, Germany, where it's very, very expensive to start a company. So for Norway, it's a great place to start. One of the downsides of being a Norwegian company is that you're pretty far away from where things are actually happening. Most decisions, if you're going to partner up or work with some of the bigger companies, the decisions are made in the US. The biggest customer groups are not in Norway, Norway is a small country and that is important to understand when you create a company regardless of industry but maybe especially for the music industry that you need to go global from day one. It's no point of focusing on Norway. That's my opinion. No, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. When it comes to like say, investor relationships and stuff, have you guys been focusing on a global investor network or have you started locally in order to get that up and running? We started locally and that has been good since especially like people knew a bit about us. They knew Tom. which were very helpful when we got started. And Tom being, just to explain. Matoma. Yeah, so Matoma is the DJ. Yeah, DJ, producer, yeah, world famous for creating several songs and also here in Norway is a TV personality as well. Yep. But yeah, but it's hard to like,

Jakob Wredstrøm

Foreign investors to understand, okay, is there anything in Norway when it comes to music because we don't really have the reputation that Sweden has. And that can be something that turn off some investors because you can't have the same or it's hard to have the same growth rate as American companies when you are based in Norway. Yeah, and I guess there's a lot of investors who doesn't have the industry specific knowledge whether or not this is a good idea of an investment. Like, you know, I'm not fully updated, but as far as I know, you know, there's only really like three companies the last years that have like made it within music tech, that being Voicy, Phonophile and Tidal. So like there's not a lot of investor, local investor exits that, you know, want to invest in the same area. So how have you worked with that? Was Tom's presence enough to convince them to be a good idea? What's been the experience with investors meeting them? So yeah, we need to distinguish here between two different investors from our end at least. It's the one that really see, okay, these guys have something in terms of the technology and scalability, and that we actually are able to find customers from it. And then when we top that off with the presence of Tom and also that we really showcase that we use each other's strength, like Tom has a great network, Simon is a genius technical person and I know what the better producers really need because I am one myself. So that combination has been powerful in order to make people understand, okay, this is something that's can actually fly. But it has been tough. Of course, we were 10 to 15 days away from bankruptcy in December, but managed to turn things around. And now things are looking better than ever. So yeah. That makes sense. It's really interesting, because obviously we also based in Norway with a Nordic focus. Do you feel like we're lacking a, let's call it a community of investors and businesses that support each other in?

Jakob Wredstrøm

The flow of information and education in this space and how it has potential. To some degree, yes. But I think a lot of it comes down to us founders that we need to think more outside of Norway right away. And you see a lot of like the competitions that will be where we met initially. You see like the way that things are structured here in Norway is not structured for international sale in the degree that we really needed to. So we just need to be more out there. We need to travel more to conferences. And that's one thing that really changed things for us this year was being present around the globe at conferences, meeting people in different cities rather than trying to cold mail them on LinkedIn or whatever, because if they don't really know you, it's hard for them to have the trust in what you are doing. Makes sense. When I hear your talk, it's very clear, or at least to me, it seems that you're a very, it's called informed and self-secure founder in the way that you perceive yourself. I might misunderstand, but that's the perception I have. How has your journey been becoming that, you know, self-confident and clear headed and directional? Because that just doesn't happen automatically. No. And Yeah, of course, if you meet a lot of challenges that you have a hard time overcome, then it goes on your self-confidence. But I think for me, it's been a lot about actually finding out how to solve problems and knowing that, okay, I can do it myself and also that I need to do it myself. That has been because

Jakob Wredstrøm

In the beginning, when we started MasterTown, one of the things that we did poorly, I would say, was that we tried to outsource, for example, like, how do we... What's the business model? How do we sell? Product market fit, all of those things. And if you don't do that yourself as a founder, then you kind of lost from the beginning. So that when we changed that mental mindset. And you also grow your confidence because you see, okay, yeah, I can actually produce results. I can do that. I can do X, Y, Z, which when you compare yourself to others, which I don't necessarily like to do, but you see, okay, I have actually something to show for in this world. Yeah, that makes sense. It resonates very much with your LinkedIn description where you say you're a doer. Yeah, so that's sort of how you perceive yourself. It's really interesting because I'm fundamentally different. I'm very much like, sounds wrong to say, I'm not a doer. I'm much more of a leader in like enabling other people to do stuff. I don't wanna come up wrong, but that's sort of my style is I'm much more an enabler than anything. So, but there's different types of founders, different types of CEOs and kind of their role.

Jakob Wredstrøm

What's your emotional relationship with being a founder? Like, how do you feel about it? Do you like it? Yeah, I'm proud. Because you can look at it like, and this is also something I experienced when I meet new people. They are often interested in what I'm doing because I'm doing something different than most other people. And that's something I think pride in. Yeah. But of course it can be emotionally challenging. Because you are alone in many ways, you need to solve things on your own. But in my case, I'm lucky that I have a good team around me. I also have a girl friend who has previous experience with building and scaling companies. So she knows what it actually means. So yeah. I have a lot of people around me that I can talk to about it. And I think that's important if you're going to stay mentally strong in this game, because it's, yeah, it's not as good as I'm a reset, you might see from a LinkedIn post or whatever. And but that's not necessarily why you, as a founder, you need to enjoy it like the tops and the bottoms of the journey. Because the yeah. That makes sense. You said a word that I resonate with is like lonely. Because, you know, that's my experience as well. You know, being a founder can be quite lonely because there's not a clear path that's set or a clear person who's gone in your footsteps. Well, you going in their footsteps. Have you always been comfortable being lonely? Yeah, I think from an early age, like. And this is a really good question because I've been thinking a lot about it as well. When I started playing football, for instance, I became a goalkeeper, which is like a lonely position in football. I also started doing music, first with a friend, but then I kept on doing it myself.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I've been used to doing a lot of things on my own. And that's something I kind of enjoy, but especially like when you can do it on your own, but get advice and talk to others about it afterwards or during when you're doing it. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, it was an interesting question because I think a lot of founders experienced this to loneliness of it. And I think it's really important to have built up maybe not... resilience, but at least a lot of experience with it, because that will probably shock some people how, how much is on your shoulders. And there's nowhere there to take the weight off your shoulders. They can help you, they can support you and cheer on you and give you a good advice, but they can't take the weight. Yeah. But one thing that I learned a lot from my dad was actually this year, in January, when we had a talk with one of our advisors. And he said that everybody expects you to fail. So do whatever you can, like do things that people don't really expect because then you might have a chance of actually doing it. And when he said that, it really dawned on me, like, yeah, when you invest in a startup or when you work with a startup, you expect them to fail. And that was like, if you were to invest in something secure, you don't invest in startups. And that like put the mental toll a bit down because then... Yeah, let's just enjoy the ride and do whatever we can to make it work. And if it doesn't work, then yeah, that was what everybody expected in the first place. But if we make it work, then we kind of, then we have taken the next step. That's great. I think that's great. Um, dual approach to startups, you know, birth taking it incredibly seriously, but also like, maybe we'll fail, but we'll have fun. That makes a lot of sense. You have a. let's call it a relatively extensive background in academics. Um, could you tell just briefly about that and how that's prepared you to be a founder?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, so I think, and for the listeners, like I have a bachelor's degree in economics, I have a master in business development, and then I started on a PhD in data driven business models. One thing that has taught me or that I've really gotten out of it is do your proper research. Because that is one thing I see with a lot of not only founders, but people in general, that they are... they don't really do the work that is needed in order to excel something or to create something. It's kind of like, they're a bit light if that's a good enough word to use here. So, and not to put myself on a pedestal or whatever, but you need to like do the proper research if you're going to do something good. And also another experience from my PhD, which isn't like really academic, but it really taught me, okay, I'm the one that needs to push things through. It's when my supervisor or the co-supervisor, he died during one of our Zoom calls with some other people. Oh, wow. And then the next week, my supervisor left for another position. So at that point, I was like, okay, I'm all alone. I don't have anybody. So then I need to assemble a new team. And right before I left to start Master Channel, I actually got one paper published. So that was like, okay, yeah, I can do things even though times are tough. Yeah. But yeah, and also I'm working in such a lonely field during the pandemic, like you sit in your own house and read papers all day long. That's a lonely state compared to being a founder. Makes sense. I'm wondering what's your internal dynamics as founders? Because... You know, you're very headstrong and very determined. What kind of other personalities are the others bringing to the table to make this holistic approach to building a business?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, so if we look at Simon first, he's a very analytical person, very engineering in ways, but also a good people person. So even though we can clash, it's always a kind of a way of discussing things in a proper way. And we push each other. And that is something that we've done from day one, push each other on everything. Which I think for somebody could be...

Jakob Wredstrøm

way too annoying or hard. But that's just how it is. And that's why we managed to create a brand that people can see and remember. And also that we kind of keep this professionality over time. With Tom, he's more of a... And this is quite... Because he's quite different from me and Simon,

Jakob Wredstrøm

who's more like loving to meet other people and being like really enjoyable around. And I think maybe that combo is kind of good because me and Simon get to step our comfort zone a bit more. And then Tom also realizes in a better way what it means to actually build a company and what is needed. And so, yeah, I feel like the dynamic there is really good. And then we are all combined in one common goal and that is to make good audio quality accessible to everyone. Yeah, and I think it's really smart with you guys bringing in Tom. Here in this podcast, we also had an episode with Wiki Newman, which is a common friend. And we also talked with Toro Picari and we talked a lot about network and how to sort of... opportunities in the music industry is very much limited to who you know and what doors people can open for you. So that's something that I've definitely taken, I've known this myself for a while but I didn't really know it before I said it like they said it that explicitly. So do you think you would have been able to make the marks in the industry without Tom and his network?

Jakob Wredstrøm

No. I think it would have taken like...

Jakob Wredstrøm

One of the first reasons why people heard about us was because of Tom. Tom had been really important in terms of getting their recognition in the first place, because otherwise we would just be another AI mouthing service. But when we tied it to Tom in the beginning, that was really helpful. As of now, as we are... We are establishing a name. We are doing more technical in terms of white labeling, opening up our API. And we have a lot of known people that have used us over time. Then, of course, his name may not be that important going forward. But what is really important, and this is what we are talking about weekly, is his network and his team's network, still is very applicable because there are a lot of people out there that... Like when you have that warm intro as you mentioned, which we all get from him or his manager Andrew, then it's much easier to start a conversation that actually can be fruitful to a partnership or a sale or whatever. It may lead to it. That makes sense. We're sort of almost closing up the episode, but right now you're in the music technology industry and you've previously been in gaming. What's your perception of the difference between those two industries, the gaming and the music industry? The gaming industry, so I would say one thing in particular is the main difference. And the gaming industry is really good at monetizing. Yeah. They can commercialize things. The music industry, we are often, I wouldn't say we're good at that. When it comes to music, we're also kind of doing that is what we can call mind the miners.

Jakob Wredstrøm

which are creating products for people who really don't have that much money. So it's kind of become like a closed cycle. If the music industry really wants to take the step up as the gaming has done, we need to find out how we can convert the rest of the world into becoming paying users. Similar to what Spotify has done with streaming or... those kind of mass thing, but if we only focus on the 11 million artists that are on Spotify Then it's kind of a small market and we need that. That's one of the big differences. Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense Great answers a lot of questions. Um, I'm a bit curious about master challenge in the future. What is what is gonna happen? So when this episode is out we are released AI for spatial mastering Wow. So you can get, yeah. And that will be a big difference because right now, artists usually pay 400 bucks for a song. With us, you can get it in your, in all the existing subscription. That's gonna make some people angry. Probably, but that's what you need to do. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And then we have some really interesting companies that are adding the white labeling at the moment. And then we're working on some new technology that can really push things further. Because our goal, like in the long term, is to have a set of different technologies and be so a platform can go into like a sandbox and pick and choose whatever they want. And then we so becoming like a more of an infrastructure company. Yeah, feel free not to answer this if it's asking too much, but what's your end goal with this company, you personally and the founders team? Our end goal is a exit at some point. Yep. Because we also have new ideas that we really want to do in the long run. But right now, it's building this as big as possible, creating a huge distributed network of different companies and artists that are using us on a daily basis.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. What would... But as mentioned, like we are from Norway and we have some downside of being from here. Ideally, this company should be in the US if it really were to go fully global in the way that we really want. So does that mean maybe a potential faster exit than if you were in USA where you could maybe build it bigger? What's sort of your thought process behind that? Or parking rocks with some companies over there. Yeah, okay or build out Yeah, there's several ways to then go here Also build out a better sales network in the US yeah or in emerging countries In an ideal scenario again, I'm diving a bit deeper who would Acquire you right now in your opinion that would be one of the more leading tech companies within audio. Yeah. Don't want to mention names, but there aren't that many. No, no. I know if you're talking about. That's really interesting. This has been a good talk. I actually feel inspired and I'm really interested about you as a person. Hopefully we'll meet at Bülal or something like that. Yeah, maybe I'll drop in. I haven't. Well, I'm not actually, but I'm in the city anyway. So yeah. Great, man. Well, thank you for your time and thank you for being on the Founder Series on Sound Connections Podcast. I'm very happy that you joined in order to inspire other founders and educate music industry professionals how we can do this. So I think you're playing a very important role in actually taking the steps of compiling this information and putting it out there. But thank you so much. And thank you for your co-founders also allowing you to be here today.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And then I really wish you a lot of success the next couple of years. Likewise. Thank you.